Double whammy for Kerala woman: Family killed in landslides, fiance dies in accident

PTI, Sep 12, 2024, 8:02 AM IST

Wayanad: As 24-year-old Shruti was barely coming to grips with the loss of her entire family in the recent catastrophic landslides in Kerala’s Wayanad district, she suffered another devastating blow as her fiance died on Wednesday after meeting with an accident.

A spokesperson of the private hospital here where the 27-year-old Jenson was admitted, confirmed that he succumbed, at 8.50 pm, to the injuries he suffered in the accident.

Shruti’s fiance, who met with an accident on Tuesday and was being treated at the Dr Moopen Medical College, was in an extremely critical condition.

Tragedy had struck Shruti, an accountant at a hospital in Kozhikode district, on July 30 when her family of nine, including her parents and younger sister were killed in the landslides that struck Chooralmala and Mundakkai villages of Meppadi panchayat.

Her only support during the tragic times was Jenson, with whom she had got engaged on June 2 after a 10-year-long courtship.

On August 29, the couple had visited the Puthumala graveyard where some of her family were buried and had reaffirmed their commitment to each other.

Days later, on September 10, Jenson got critically injured when his car collided head-on with a private bus.

Shruti and some other family members of Jenson, who were also travelling in the same car, also got injured in the accident.

The doctors, earlier in the day, told TV channels that he was brought to the hospital in a critical condition with his vital signs very low, excessive bleeding from his nose and bleeding inside and outside his brain.

When the couple had reaffirmed their commitment to each other, Jenson, who works for a car cleaning company in the district, had said that he promised himself that he would never leave the side of his school-time friend Shruti when she told him about the tragedy that had befallen her family.

The couple, initially set to tie the knot in December with fanfare, were planning to have a simple court-registered marriage in September.

Shruthi lost about Rs 4 lakh in cash and around 15 ‘sovereigns’ of gold along with her newly-built home that was washed away in the landslides that claimed over 200 lives.